Speaker
Description
The quality of steel ingots is strongly influenced by melt flow during solidification, which remains difficult to control in conventional ingot casting and often leads to segregation defects and porosity. While various flow-control strategies exist, no widely adopted industrial solution is available for ingot casting.
The Rotating Casting Mold (RCM) technology, developed by INTECO, introduces a mechanical approach to actively control melt flow during solidification. By inducing rotational motion of the mold, forced convection is generated throughout the ingot, promoting a more uniform grain structure and improving central soundness.
In this study, industrial-scale casting trials were conducted on two 21-ton steel ingots to compare conventional ingot casting with the RCM technology. The results demonstrate a significantly improved solidification structure, characterized by a finer and more homogeneous grain structure, an increased equiaxed region, and reduced segregation and porosity.
To support the experimental findings, a physics-based CFD model was applied. The simulations indicate that mold rotation promotes fragmentation and enhances equiaxed grain formation, leading to the observed structural changes. Good agreement between experimental and numerical results confirms the predictive capability of the model.
Overall, the results highlight the strong potential of RCM technology for improving ingot quality and provide a basis for further process optimization.
| Speaker Company/University | Thomas Holzgruber / INTECO melting and casting technologies GmbH |
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